Is a wedding at a 'plantation' bad form? or romantic?
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Anonymous
| If it's not being farmed by slaves now, I don't see the issue. It's just a pretty backdrop. |
Anonymous
At the time, slavery was considered neither illegal nor immoral. The claim that "it's a huge, immoral stain on our country's history," is entirely retroactive. You are projecting today's values back on past centuries where they have no relevance or application. The idea that we, today, should feel guilty for things we did not do, and for which the actual perpetrators neither did nor should (remember: neither illegal nor immoral) feel any guilt, is absurd and insane. There is no "stain" on me or on 2019 America from antebellum slavery. Nobody alive today had anything to do with it, or suffered from it. |
Anonymous
This isn't correct. Everyone knew that slavery was somewhere between morally questionable and morally wrong. |
Anonymous
Lol yeah a “Tiananmen Square” wedding would be weird especially if the Bride arrived in a tank, which wouldnt be that different from making your bridesmaids look like Gone With The Wind extras. |
Anonymous
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Apologies if someone has already brought this up. Perhaps a slightly different perspective here as a museum professional...
Many historic sites are now making concerted efforts to tell a fuller story, including the darker aspects. Someone already mentioned Mt. Vernon. Williamsburg and Monticello are also more directly addressing the lives of slaves and the institution of slavery in their interpretations. These types of things do take careful research, consultation with stakeholders, and money. Of course, money! Smaller historic houses are trying to make efforts to do these things too, but often are working with a smaller pool of money. Even the biggies like Williamsburg a struggling these days. 
For many historic houses/sites, the PRIMARY source of funding is rental of their space for events. I don't know if this is still the case, but I worked for the National Building Museum in the 2000s. It's not affiliated with the Smithsonian (most people don't realize that) and runs as a non profit. During the time I worked there the bulk of it's funding (by a wide margin) was from event rentals. As in it wouldn't have been able to continue to stay open without event rentals. So, while I'm not in the market for wedding venues at the moment  I think I would consider renting a former plantation if I saw that they were making efforts to provide full context and interpretation at their site. As a museum professional, I would recognize that my payment for a wedding was helping pay for some 3rd grade class to take a field trip and hopefully learn something.
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Anonymous
This is totally false. |
Anonymous
+1. There was even this war fought (primarily) over it, maybe PP has heard of it. I can't believe that PP is trying to claim that slavery was legal and not immoral back then, and so therefore a wedding on a plantation is fine. I think I've heard everything. |
Anonymous
Serious question: is their an agreed upon definition to what a plantation is? I ask because my follow up is, what should we as a society do with these plantations? |
Anonymous
Good lord, this is hardly worth engaging with, but: As white folks, we do bear a stain. It's called responsibility for the past. That's different from personal guilt. Responsibility for the past includes, at a bare minimum, not using the places of other people's suffering as a backdrop for your tee-hee Insta-wedding. |
Anonymous
No one alive today suffered from slavery? It's funny how some people engage in magical thinking around slavery--as if its effects simply disappeared after slavery ended. No acknowledgement of Jim Crow, segregation, lynching, redlining, or any of the other ways that systemic racism has played out in the ensuing years. Btw, this woman who helped ring the bell to open the NMAAHC in 2016 is the daughter of a slave. Her father escaped from slavery as a young man. Perhaps she may have been directly affected by it? Slavery is not such an old relic, even though so may wish to think of this way. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/ruth-odom-bonner-who-rang-freedom-bell-president-obama-passes-away-100-180964714/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ruth-bonner-slave-daughter-museum_n_57e6d472e4b0e80b1ba26222 |
Anonymous
Our interpretation of of our responsibility for the past differs. |
Anonymous
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Eh. Slavery is as old as time. Slavery was found in just about every civilization and society and culture globally. The ancient civilizations were built upon the backs of slavery.
Do you stare at the pyramids and demand that they should be demolished because god knows how many thousands of slaves died in constructing the pyramids? Or the Roman forum (or what's left of it?). Or the Mayan pyramids? Or the Great Wall of China? The peculiarity of American slavery, which, by the context of slavery historically, was not quite as bad as it could have been, was that it was race based and it violated the notion of free-will and self-determination that the US had enshrined as a principle founding concept for our country. Historically, the idea that a man's free-will and self determination needed to be respected is actually a very recent concept. Prior to the 1800s it was not something practiced or believed in by most cultures, which is why the crime of slavery was not seen as such in the past. That slavery was racially based was also a relatively new concept, in the ancient world slavery was multicultural and of course in other cultures slaves were of the same race as their masters. It seems to me that the sheer anger towards the existence of slavery in America's past has less to do with that it was slavery, per se, but that it was a racially based institution. It's also interesting how we've swung from the happy clappy slaves tripe of the 1930s movies to Django perspective of today where it's akin to the holocaust. The reality is that American slavery was was a much more muddled institution somewhere in between the two. I've read the fascinating accounts of slave survivors in the LOC and for every ex-slave who talked of a cruel master who beat his slaves, there's another one who talks of a kind and benevolent master. American slaves were extremely expensive, the average white American could never afford one. The typical slaveowner was a farmer who owned 2-3 slaves to help out on his farm and who worked alongside the white family in the fields and at the endless chores. The typical slave was owned on a plantation but the typical plantation was a smallish affair with 2-3 dozen slaves. Only a tiny minority of planters had 100+ slaves like Washington. And while we can stare at the few surviving slave cabins and be appalled by living in shacks with dirt floors, but in 1860 so did a lot of poor whites.... What's also fascinating is how many southerners did not see the institution as immoral. At all. Many thought they were being benevolent and responsible. Yes, I know, I know. It's perverse to think of slavery as such these days, but that was the perspective back then. I've struggled to understand the mindset myself but I am coming from the 21st century. And the North was only marginally better, it may not have approved of slavery but it also did not see African Americans as equals as white. The state of New York was firmly abolitionist but in the 1860 election, while voting for Lincoln, the state also rejected, by a thumping majority, granting the right to vote to all free blacks. Complex world. Complex history. |
Anonymous
I think it's our basic sense of decency that differs. |
Anonymous
Concentration Camps didn't have owners, they were property of the state. But assuming you mean the bosses or directors of the camp, are there fancy houses or manors that were built by concentration camp inmates that are now used by weddings? Enough to be used as weddings all the time? |
Anonymous
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This documentary is currently airing on PBS. I highly recommend it for the posters who think it's okay to hold a wedding on a plantation.
https://www.pbs.org/weta/reconstruction/ |